Research Track in Göttingen

The Research Track (RT) in Göttingen is (quite obviously) meant for students to pursue their research interests.

It is applying a laboratory-approach in its core courses.

In addition, the RT allows for choosing two electives from select classes offered by the programmes that are part of Euroculture (Political Science, Sociology, English Philology and North American Studies, History, Theology, German Philology and Intercultural German Studies).

This is how it looks:

• Challenge-based teaching
  
• Students identify a challenges they want to deal with in the seminar (i.e., the war in Ukraine, climate change or migration).
  
• Students pool their knowledge from their respective backgrounds to reflect upon, frame and discuss the issues at hand.
  
• They can then conceptualize alternative approaches and solutions.

Empirical Analysis of European Politics
(Core Class, 7 ECTS, Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Simon Fink)

• Offers additional tools for the methodological toolbox of the students
  
• Teaching quantitative methods not only for those who are into that field, but are good also for students who want to pursue a qualitative project, if only to better situate their case in the broader research field of European Studies.
  
• Students will get hands-on experience on how these datasets are generated and the databases structured, learn about their advantages and limits, and how they can be used to answer substantive questions about multilevel politics.
  
• Applications include quantitative research designs that use existing datasets, but also the use of quantitative data to identify interesting cases for study, or case studies that trace European policies from the proposal to the final legislative act.

… and two mandatory electives (two classes combined: 8 ECTS):

Module “Politics and Law"
(Mandadory Elective Scheme)
Examples from the last years:

• Living with diversity: Comparative Perspectives on the political rights of indigenous people and national minorities
  
• Politics of Globalization
  
• Curse or gift? Natural resources in intrastate conflicts
  
• Pandemic and Politics
  
• Theorizing State Power.

“Understanding Europe” (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Simon Fink):
The weekly seminar is meant for students to get further acquainted with a social science perspective on European studies and to sharpen their scholarly profile. Social science research on Europe will be applied to current social and political problems, and students will learn to critically evaluate real-world problems with a social scientific perspective.

Module “Society"
(Mandadory Elective Scheme)
Examples from the last years:

• Comparative Welfare State Research - Proseminar
  
• Cities and Migration, 1850s-2000s

Module “Culture"
(Mandadory Elective Scheme)
Examples from the last years:

• Humans, Robots, Androids
  
• Climate Fiction: Writing, History, and Ethics in a Planetary Age
  
• Intercultural Hermeneutics
  
• Postcolonial Rewritings of Shakespeare

Module “History"
(Mandadory Elective Scheme)
Examples from the last years:

• Critical Histories and the Problem of Space
  
• Afghanistan in the 20th and 21st century: Global and regional aspects

Module “Economy"
(Mandadory Elective Scheme)
Examples from the last years:

• Immigrant Entrepreneurship